11.16.2009

For a country with so many goats, you'd think goat cheese would have found its way into the local diet.

Not so.

"Regular" cheese, aka cow cheese, is also a non-starter.

I don't know why.

Cheese is one of my favorite sources of protein.

But here in Morocco, cheese is rare.

If you ask for l-fromaj (borrowed directly from the French fromage), you'll get soft cheese, sold by the 1-dh triangular wedge. Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow) is the most common variety, but there are a couple competitors - La Hollandaise and another whose name I don't recall.

A full sphere runs you about 150 dirhams, so I usually buy only 20-50 dh worth at a time, depending how many people I'm cooking for.

20dh of redball gets me a wedge about an inch across at its widest point. When grated, that's enough cheese for a cookie-sheet-sized pizza.

(But wait, you say, surely pizza is better with cheddar or mozzarella cheese? Of course, I reply, then smack you upside the head and point you to my earlier comment: if you want hard cheese, you have EXACTLY ONE OPTION: redball. It's impossible to find cheddar or mozzarella outside of the big cities. And since the nearest big city is 9-12 hours away, depending on transport, it means I'm leading a mostly cheese-less life. I'd love a block of cheddar, or a crumble of blue cheese, or some soft goat cheese...I'd swoon over a wheel of fresh Parmesan. Mmm...parm... But here in rural Morocco, I get redball and only redball, and I have to go into SouqTown even to find that. So I grate the gouda and am grateful for it.)

By the way, during my recent trip to the US, I was **shocked** to discover that redball is available in America. I don't know why it surprised me so much; everything is available in America, right? But somehow, the intersection of bled Peace Corps life with big-city-America life just knocked me over.

1 comment:

I've basically decided that unless my life depends on it, or I absolutely CANNOT get another kind of cheese for an extended amount of time, I am never again going to eat Laughing Cow Cheese. Of any variety. (Morocco only has the generic kind, but there are flavors - like dill or basil - available in the US.) One of my roommates bought some Laughing Cow Cheese. When I saw it in the fridge, I actually physically shuddered. But, I really love Redball Cheese. I very happily remember the Redball Cheese Pizza that we had on the Fourth of July there. It was a great way to celebrate the US' birthday.

The Innocent

I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer working in a Berber village (which I refer to as Berberville) near a larger Berber town (which I call SouqTown) in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
My neighbors call me Kauthar, the Arabic name I've adopted. It's from the Qur'an, and means "the abundance of good", including the river in heaven.
Feel free to email me at innocentablogged@gmail.com. The only "stupid question" is the one you don't ask. :)